𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 || 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐚✔

Chapter 2

"Lisa, you look like crap."

I lift my soggy head, narrowing my eyes across the table at my sister. She's her usual cheerful self, face glowing brightly as she twirls a spoon along the rim of her cereal bowl. Her lips are split into a wide smile, white blocks of teeth beaming, as if she had just paid me some great tribute simply by being in the same kitchen as me. I glare at her, trying to make my eyes as angry as possible, but my lack of sleep for the past two days has done very little in the way of making any expression I make the least bit convincing.

It's not that she is lying, I just hate that she has to point it out - and so cheerfully, too, with that photogenic smile of hers. I sigh into my cereal, frowning at the mushy flakes while I prop my chin into the open palm of my hand. Since Saturday night, I've maybe slept a total of four to five hours, and not consecutively. Every time I close my eyes and try to slip into that once peaceful dreamland, I'm assaulted with a thousand reminders, a million sensations that hurtle me straight back to consciousness - her blotted, black eyelashes fluttering like wet butterfly wings against the height arcs of her cheekbones, the smell of her perfume (something fruity, like peaches and oranges all mixed) drowned in the rain, the sound of her breath catching just before I, before I - and the way her lips felt soft and smooth when I kissed -

A loud clutter of metal against glass erupts as I drop my spoon into my bowl, fingers threading into my black hair. I groan, my eyes screwing shut like that will muffle out the memory so thick and vibrant projected on my eyelids like a movie on loop.

"What's the matter with you? Hungover?" Taylor's teeth click against her spoon. Milk seeps into the line between her lips before she swallows, the sculpted curves of her eyebrows jerking over her nose. "That's not very classy, Lisa."

"Taylor. I was here all night. You were here all night."

She gives a shrug. "So? How do I know you're not a closet alcoholic?"

The word 'closet' makes my stomach lurch. I shove my bowl across the table and stand, clawing my hand through my hair again like I'm trying to wring the fog of fatigue out of my skull. Upstairs, I scrub my teeth with vigour, attempting to avoid my reflection. Taylor was right. I really look like crap. Dark crescents are smudged under my eyes like bruises, my skin lacking its usual porcelain glow. I look washed out, almost sickly, and as I attempt to bring my eyes to life with streaks of mascara, I meet my gaze in the mirror with a blink of shock.

I just look so tired.

My finger entwine as I bow over the sink, resting my forehead on the hump of my thumb knuckles. This is stupid. Not sleeping, having no appetite - you'd think I had gone off and killed someone. I groan into the cup of my hands. It was just a kiss. A silly, late-night kiss. I doesn't mean anything. I doesn't make me gay or bisexual or curious of anything. Girls kiss girls all the time, right?

I lift my head, hesitantly meeting my own eyes again. It's like looking straight on into the gaze of a stranger, someone afraid of themselves, and I realise I am. I'm terrified. Because girls might kiss other girls all the time, but they don't always like it.

And I did.

I shake my head, burying it into my palms again. Chaeyoung's called me about ten times since prom. She wanted to hang out yesterday - her bubbly voicemail was as cheerful and innocent as ever as she suggested a movie and a smoothie, but I didn't bother to call her back. I couldn't. Even hearing her voice ring through the phone was enough to make me gasp, paralysed - I remember with painful detail the soft choking of her barely muffled cry in the passenger seat of my car as she said she wanted a special prom night.

Swallowing, I lift my head with a deep, long breath. I hold it as I march out of the bathroom and down the stairs, releasing it only when my feet sink into the carpet of my living room. Taylor's frowning at her reflection in the door's side window, her nose pulled up at a hardly gorgeous angle with the tip of her finger.